Lockdown 1.0 was marked by Banana bread, egg shortages and toilet-roll stockpiling. For the new lockdown, we’ve had toilet roll stockpiling and it’s bleak out there. I’m pretty sure that gazillions of people everywhere are panic-buying eggs and flour like there’s no tomorrow and as though they’ve going to make enough cake to feed the five thousand for the remainder of 2020.
Lockdown 2.0 is not disappointing yet. There is dissent and division; people are arguing; the shit has hit the fan across the pond and the United States is falling apart; students are toppling walls and I’m trying to source good coffee that I didn’t make (spoiler: trowbers is well endowed with places to get a cuppa to take out!).
But will the banana bread return. Will there be vengeance, anger, competition and fallout from sub-standard banana breads? Will the banana breads be seeking their revenge on a society that has taken them from granted. Will they be stodging away in a corner, waiting to fur up your intestines with their bananary goodness or will they come and get you in the might when you wake up for a wee, and just want a little nibble. I don’t know what banana bread is going to do to me or for me, but I know that it’s there, loitering in my life, calling at me and reminding me that it’s lockdown.
But with the return of banana bread as the slightly carby by-product of lockdown, there are other, terrible by-products that we need to keep in mind. Some people are losing everything. Some kids are having such a wobbly time with the anxiety, upset and uncertainty with lockdown wreaking havoc through their homelives. Other kids had that during ‘not lockdown’ because of the vulnerability in their households and others lost everything because they’re having to shield. People have lost their loved ones and this lockdown situation is a no-win situation for everyone. It’s horrible but for me to process it and make some sort of sense of it, so that I can keep my brain ticking over in a not-so-crap way, I need to be trivial. I need to focus on the guff and daftness.
For me that focus is the return of Banana bread and its plan for us during this pandemic.
